Category Archives: General

The London Mayoral Election: Stand Alone Campaign or Practical Opinion Polling?

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As we rapidly approach May 3rd, polling day for local elections up and down the country, the closely anticipated and much scrutinized London Mayoral Election begins to dominate more and more of the nation’s media coverage. Given its presence as the central focus of campaigning for all of the major parties, and also some of the minor ones, during this round of voting, the press has clamored to attach as much meaning and substance to it as possible, apparently bestowing upon it the status of unofficial comment on the success of the coalition government’s first term up to this point. But in such circumstances it is important to ask, how significant is this election with regards to public opinion on the government’s performance? Read the rest of this entry

Disaffection, disinterestedness? Labour must mobilise

The ungainly scramble of Labour MPs past and present to the new outposts of political power offered by city mayors and police commissioners, has impressed very few onlookers of late.  This rush for influence is crucial to the party’s future prospects, but Labour must go much further.  Bradford West was a one-off result in many ways, but the significance of defeat there has not escaped Ed Miliband.  Not just Labour, but all the major political parties have lost a great deal of support in recent years. Read the rest of this entry

Change we can’t believe in

Ahead of next month’s local elections Ed Miliband today gave a speech in Derby promoting Labour’s campaign.

Outlining what he thinks is wrong in the country, Miliband claimed that “we have a political system that too many people believe can’t change it. It makes people believe that things can’t be any better than they are. That it doesn’t matter who is in charge.” Read the rest of this entry

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: why the tangled web of Mitt’s mendacity has complicated his path to the Presidency

Barack Obama certainly looks to have a tough job on his hands getting re-elected. Quite apart from seeking to transform America into that living hell we all know to be European social democracy, the President has shrunk the US military and, perhaps most importantly, doubled America’s budget deficit from the $1.3 trillion figure he inherited in 2009.

At least that’s what Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney would have you believe. An underwhelming Super Tuesday all but confirmed Romney as the party’s nominee, though a pair of third place finishes behind Newt Gingrich and winner Rick Santorum in the South on Tuesday night complicate things somewhat . Yet this further elevation to his political status has seemingly done little to assuage Romney’s propensity for what can only be termed lies. Read the rest of this entry

Invisible Children are the wrong NGO to support in the fight against Joseph Kony

I woke up this morning to find my Facebook and Twitter feeds full of links to a video which was made by a charitable NGO called Invisible Children (IC). This video was produced to increase awareness of the war crimes committed by Joseph Kony.  As most people will now know, Joseph Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) a guerrilla group which were once based in Uganda but who have now moved on to a number of different countries in Central Africa.

The video outlines the fact that Kony and the LRA have committed countless war crimes and crimes against humanity including, murder, rape as a weapon of war, torture and the use of child soldiers in combat.  The main aim of the video is to increase awareness of Joseph Kony and the LRA and to lobby the US government into military action against the LRA. READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY

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